I liked how everything turned out. It was especially fun to cut the 2nd mix as it had a few louder tunes that I normally might not use. I was too lazy to put together a totally new mix so I decided to put my two parts of the Lifted Icons mix into one new mix.

After I put them together I started tinkering. I added a few tunes to make it longer. And then I changed a lot of the first part but kept the same "drifting in the void" feel. The transition from melancholic wander to triumphant return starts at the 22:28 mark with the Underworld tune. The title for the mix comes from a track I used by the same name from Tony Anderson. It fit perfectly with the journey from part one to part two.

First of all, what a great title! And second, what fantastic cover art!

When I heard the song "Simpler Times" I knew that I had to buy the album and I knew that I had to make a mix with an retro, analog, space sound. So I set about collecting tunes that sound like they could have come from an old space science filmstrip. Some of the music is from current artists like Boards of Canada, Air, The Belbury Circle, Panabrite, Cafe Kaput, Moon Wiring Club, Schengen and Lunar Testing Lab. But mixed in there is also old electronic music from Eric Vann, Paul Hart, Alan Hawkshaw and Frank Comstock. Much of the old music has a sort of cheesy, retro vibe that I love in a mix like this.

As I said a few posts back, I am a huge space science dork. My top 5 favorite NASA probes are:

1. Voyager

2. Cassini

3. Viking

4. Galileo

5. Spirit & Opportunity

Number two on that list disintegrated in the atmosphere of Saturn today. Cassini was in orbit around Saturn for 7 years and made some of the most fantastic encounters of any planetary mission. The most amazing discovery concerns a little moon called Enceladus. Through Cassini, scientists have determined that Enceladus has a global subsurface saltwater ocean that might host hydrothermal vents. It's probably our best bet for finding life in our solar system.

But Cassini was running out of fuel and rather than risk crashing into a moon and contaminating it, the folks at NASA decided to plunge the spacecraft into Saturn. Cassini will dive into the planet's atmosphere, sending science data for as long as its small thrusters can keep the spacecraft's antenna pointed at Earth. Soon after, Cassini will burn up and disintegrate like a meteor.

This mix is a Requiem for Cassini. Rather than an electronic, space music feel I went with all neo-classical and soundtrack cuts. The track titles tell the story.

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives."

- Carl Sagan

I have always loved Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" essay. It's even better hearing his voice reading it. In the Cosmos reboot from a couple of years ago, when they played a clip of Carl I actually cried. Yes, I am a huge dork. So needless to say, Sagan reading about the pale blue dot gets me every time.

There are a ton of videos on youtube combining his quotes with music & images. Some are quite good, some use horrible cheesy music or hokey stock photos. I thought, heck I'm a video editor, I'll make my own video. But then I realized how sometimes the images can detract from the prose.

So I decided to combine Sagan's Pale Blue Dot with one of my all-time favorite pieces of music - Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight." The next step was to use that mashup to lead off a mix dedicated to Earth Day 2017 & the coinciding March for Science. If you look at the track titles the theme is obvious.

I eventually did make a video to go with the mashup. But it's just one image. It's a pic taken by the Cassini spacecraft from just beyond Saturn. It's Pale Blue Dot 2.0 if you will. The video is just one long slow pull from earth out to the full image.

I've done a lot of mixes over the last ten years. Obviously I try to have a theme or mood for each mix. It can get difficult come up with new motifs. That's why I love the idea that Mike G of Ambient Music Guide had last year. We decided to trade guest mixes and he suggested we each send each other a few mix titles and that we select one and build the mix off of that title. It really gets me thinking differently and can help get me out of a rut when looking for mix inspiration.

This mix is the second guest mix from Mike. I love getting these mixes because so often there are artists or genres I normally don't use but that I love listening to. This mix exemplifies that perfectly. I don't listen to as much "space" music as I used to and as I lost myself in this mix I realized that I really need to revisit this style of ambient more often. I am looking forward to using this as a stargazing soundtrack when I vacation in northern Wisconsin later this summer.

I
know this is not the best time of year for sitting out side and
stargazing. At least not here in Wisconsin. But I haven't done a
stargazing mix in a long time so i thought I'd throw this out there.

The
piece that got me started on this mix isn't an actual song. It's
NASA's Voyager spacecraft recording the sound of interstellar space. Voyager's plasma wave instrument detected the vibrations of dense
interstellar plasma, or ionized gas, from October to November 2012 and
April to May 2013. You can find the recording here... Voyager.

I
couldn't resist using that sound as a launch pad for this mix. The
rest is pretty straight forward ambient/space music. For some strange
reason I felt compelled to make this mix nearly 2 hours long. If you
want to lay outside for two hours & gaze at the night sky in the
middle of December, better bring some scotch & an electric blanket.
;)

The good folks over at Nocturne Recordsasked meto do a mix for their podcast. They put out some great music so how could I resist!

Most of the time with my mixes I'll stumble upon one or two tunes that spark an idea.In this case I rediscovered an old electronic album that I had in college. It's a compilation called Music from the 21st Century.

That album got me thinking about science fiction music, whether it's music used in sci-fi or just tunes that sound like they should be in a sci-fi film.

This mix uses two tracks from the 21st Century album along with several other old electronic cuts.A couple of those older cuts are from another college favorite, Synergy - Cords. I loved that album back then & still go to it occasionally for a nostalgia hit. The whole album definitely has a sci fi movie soundtrack sort of feel to it. The mix isn't totally old electronics, there is also some newer material mixed in.

Back in November I did a mix for the launch of Curiosity, NASA's newest Mars rover. Now 8 months later, Curiosity has arrived at Mars. So this mix is music for landing on Mars, in honor of Curiosity's EDL or entry, descent and landing.

As I write this, the landing has not taken place yet. But I wanted to get the mix uploaded on the day of the landing. I'll update the post depending on the result of the EDL.

I started off this mix just picking electronic tunes I liked for this theme then quickly realized that many of the titles fit perfectly. Track titles such as "We Travel", "Bold Advances" "Flying (in crimson skies)" and "Arrival". So I looked for a few more with appropriate names, kept a few that had titles that didn't matter and the mix was launched.

Those of us who are science dorks were fascinated earlier this month when it was announced that the discovery of a new particle was very likely the elusive Higgs-Boson. The particle has been the subject of a nearly 50 year hunt to explain why matter has mass.

This mix is a celebration of that discovery. With titles like "Particle," "Sweet Collision," and "Magnetic Fields," all the track titles work very well with a Higgs-Boson, high energy physics theme.